Mayo should win, but Harte has nous to rescue Derry

Sport's ability to replicate life, it’s perils, joys and frustrations is well known.

It specialises in creating setbacks and comebacks as a key backdrop to all its best stories. Imagine Rory McIlroy if/when he wins his next major in golf. Imagine Mayo finally winning an All-Ireland.

These stories would be monumental, Hollywood-esque narratives, not because of the achievement themselves, but because of the classic rising from the dead story arc both would represent.

Derry come rolling into Castlebar this evening. The story of the spring have become the story of the summer.

For everything they amazed us with as they conquered all before them, they have managed to somehow, incomprehensibly, amaze us with the opposite since then.

Their surety on the ball, their swaggering dominance of possession and games, their energy, their defensive ruthlessness. It was such a package that it would have been illogical not to see them as the third of the real All-Ireland contenders alongside Dublin and Kerry.

The hype train had a wave of momentum behind it not seen since Donegal in 2012. Yet a few months later and everything has changed utterly. Even in sporting terms, this collapse is difficult to wrap the head around.

Not least because at the helm is the most experienced manager currently in the game. So much of Derry’s start to the season reminded me of Tyrone first breakthrough in 2003. It felt like Mickey Harte was doing the same trick all over again. Now? Not so much.

Yet, heading in to Castlebar today, there is a definite hesitancy to write Derry off.

Yes, form lines, logic and pretty much all angles of analysis say it’s a Mayo win, and yet, there is a what if?

Now in a world of comebacks this would be a standout one by any measure. To borrow